Rajasthan Royals won by 3 wickets over Gujarat Titans at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on April 16 in the IPL 2023. Rajasthan Royals won the toss and opted to bowl. Batting first, Gujarat Titans posted 177 runs, courtesy of Shubman Gill’s 45, Miller’s 46 and a few contribution from others.

While chasing, Rajasthan Royals lost both their openers very cheaply. However, Sanju Samson scored 60 whereas Shimron Hetmyer scored 56 and helped the side win with 4 balls to spare.

Here is what the captains and the player of the match said after the game:

Shimron Hetmyer, Player of the Match said as quoted by Cricbuzz: I don’t have any words. Difficult to win against these guys, they beat us thrice last year but today was sort of a revenge. I practise these situations, it helps when you practise with that mindset of knowing we are few wickets down and chasing 100 with 8 overs to go. (On Noor Ahmad bowling the final over) I was actually pretty happy to be honest, he bowled well throughout so the first ball all I was thinking about was getting that double and take it from there.

Sanju Samson said as quoted by Cricbuzz: When you play quality opponents on a quality wicket, you get such games. Very happy to compete in such a game and come out on top. It was important to rotate our bowlers, they were playing some quality cricket and we had to respect that. The whole team came up well today and we could restrict them to around 170. The start we had, it shows how good a wicket this was. The new ball the quality of swing bowling was good and we had to respect that. But today Zampa coming was a way to match-up with the opponents. He was the match-up for Miller and almost got the wicket, but the catch was dropped. (On Hetmyer) He doesn’t like easy situations, we like putting him in such situations because he usually wins us games from such situations.

Padikkal said as quoted by Cricbuzz: It got a little tensed in the end, especially when the match went down to the wire, but we had the batter out there who could finish it off. We had to keep the scoreboard ticking, and we made sure to get that odd-boundary. It was moving around a but in the first few overs, but thankfully we got through those overs. It’s unbelievable how he (Hetmyer) does such things, such a great talent to have in our side.

Hardik Pandya said as quoted by Cricbuzz: To be honest no (didn’t expect the loss after the powerplay), but that’s the beauty about this game. The game is never over till it’s over, another lesson for us. (Noor Ahmad) He’s someone who’s difficult to pick, got us the big breakthrough but the other bowlers didn’t execute. Body is good, everything is good. It’s a very long tournament. A lot of matches left, we still need to play a lot of group cricket even if we had won today. (On Gujarat’s score) I felt short. After I got out, they bowled a couple of good overs, but we should have gone a little harder and got to 200. We did cover it well but when I was watching from outside, I did feel that we were 10 runs maybe short.